Man in the Street or Hand Over Mouth

By Heather McHugh b. 1948 Heather McHugh

He claps a hand

Across the gaping hole—

Or else the sight might

Well inside to

Melt the mind—if any

Thinking spoke

Were in the wheel,

Or any real

Fright-fragments broke

Out of the gorge to

Soak the breast, the meaning

Might incite a stroke—best

Press against it, close

The clawhole, stand

In stupor, petrified. The dream

Be damned, the deeps defied.

The hand’s to keep

The scream inside.

Heather McHugh, “Man in the Street or Hand Over Mouth” from The American Scholar. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Source: The American Scholar (University of Washington Press, 2006)

Biography

Poet Heather McHugh’s work is noted for its rhetorical gestures, sharp puns and interest in the materials of language itself—her self-described determination is “to follow every surge of language, every scrap and flotsam.” Describing her work in the Boston Review, poet and critic Richard Howard alleged that “most of McHugh’s poems end in a spurt, as they proceed in a slather, of just such astonishment as is bestowed—afforded—by . . .

Continue reading this biography